ASPECTS
Summer is a newly promoted soldier in the Orange Star army. Carefree among friends and stubborn against enemies, she has a sharp eye. Assigned transport of an elite commando squad behind enemy lines but the vehicle was badly damaged and made a forced stop.

Before this she served as a spotter for infantry and placed weapons alike. Since the role isn't needed at all times, Summer worked as an extra vehicle operator. When her unit routinely took losses due to artillery fire tradeoffs, she quickly learned how to use a gun herself.

Her home town was crushed by the deployment of a Black Hole pipeline. She has held a grudge against them ever since. The area was known for its natural beauty and Summer often spent vacation time leading hikes through the wilderness.

STUNTS
Active Passive - Spotter
pick a friendly to assist in proximity or over radio
+2 shoot, notice, drive, and flight for that unit
-2 shoot, notice, drive, and flight for self
costs 1 FATE point to use

Passive - Crossfire
+2 shoot when a friendly is in the way
+1 only for heavy weapons

Vasil is a former Blue Moon soldier and a veteran of many wars. Back in Blue Moon service he specialised in communications, electronic warfare and radar and sonar technologies. He started out as an army signalist, but was later transferred to the navy where he served onboard a highly secret experimental submarine.

After the last war he retired and attempted to settle down in the countryside smack in the middle of the territory that is now being occupied by the Black Hole forces.

Civilian life wasn't really for him anyway, he thought, and he joined the newly formed local rebel militia as a partisan. His long military experience proved very useful to the rebellion which mostly consisted of farmers scrounging whatever weapons they could find, and he quickly rose among their ranks and became something of a local hero.

Aspects:

Partisan Guerrilla
Vasil's primary motivation is to fight back the Black Hole occupation until they are forced to give up hold of the country. Has contacts with the friendly rebel forces that oppose the BH occupation in this region, allowing him to request supplies and support when available. The rebels, however, aren't terribly well supplied and are fighting a losing battle without outside support, so the availability of their help is sporadic.

Former Blue Moon Soldier
Has a distinguished past with the BM military, although the circumstances of his departure were somewhat sketchy, so don't expect everyone from the Blue Moon army and government to relate warmly.

Dishonourably Discharged
When Captain Juiko Karius stole the Blue October, Vasil defected to Orange Star along the rest of the crew. Obviously the Blue Moon command had a dim view of this.

After the political upheavals in the Blue Moon and relations between the two nations growing warmer, Vasil moved back to the quiet outskirts of his home country. Although the court martial was content merely stripping him of his rank and position in the navy, there are still those who believe they were too easy on him.

This is a social aspect that can affect Vasil negatively when dealing with members of the Blue Moon military, particularly older officers who might remember him.

Veteran of Many Wars
Should give him insight in a broad range of situations.

Local Hero
The local population knows of his past heroics against the oppressor, and many of them are more than willing to help him any way they can.

Local Expertise
He has deep knowledge of the local surroundings, culture and language. Likely places to find supplies, shelters and hideouts, where are the BH checkpoints and how to go around them. etc

Black Hole Fugitive
Him being a figure well known for his anti-BH exploits, he can be recognised by the Black Hole secret police making it harder for him to stay undercover in populated areas.

Old War Wound
Suffered grenade injury during a combat situation long time ago. While he was lucky enough to keep his mobility, the shrapnel still lodged in his spine can limit his physical ability at inopportune moments.

Skills

+4 Will (Vasil's long military career means he's seen everything and hardly anything phases him)

+3 Stealth (As a partisan guerrilla he needs to know how to stay hidden)
+3 Notice (Naturally sharp eye combined with experience. He's survived more than one ambush in his time. He knows the telltales.)

+2 Command (Vasil is not the leader type but his experience gives him natural authority.)
+2 Shoot

+1 Physique
+1 Athletics (Vasil has led an active life but his age is starting to show.)
+1 Repair
+1 Deceive
+1 Rapport

Stunts:

Radio & Signals Specialist: Gets bonus for quickly setting up radio communications. Operating most common field radio types. Selecting the frequency, directing the antenna and selecting a stealthy spot, scrambling and coding signals etc.

Radar Operator: Knows how to use most radar and sonar types commonly found in military vehicles, naval vessels, radar stations etc. Also gives him insight on techniques of how to avoid detection.

One Ping Only: Can modify one piece of electrical equipment that sends out signals (such as a field radio) to send out a radar pulse (ping) that reveals enemy vehicles (particularly flying ones) within a radius determined by the size, complexity and power of the equipment used (GM decides) Since this is an active scan, it will be detected by any enemy radars within range. The piece of equipment is destroyed after use.

Equipment:

AK-47 (Cheap and reliable if simple weapon. A Blue Moon classic. The most common assault rifle in Wars World. One of the few weapons readily available to the rebels)
Pistol
Field radio (Can be used to communicate with the rebels in the area but Vasil is paranoid about maintaining radio silence. And for good reason.)
Map and compass
Backpack with camping supplies

Last edited by Narts on Sun Aug 16, 2015 8:30 am, edited 2 times in total.

By the way, I could take this opportunity to suggest an alternate rolling system. You see, I once played in a group where the GM introduced to us this novel system where we used cards instead of dice to determine outcomes of tests.

From my recollection, it worked well, and would probably work well in a forum game too.

Basically, each player has 10 cards, numbered from 1 to 10.

Every time the player would make a test that would normally require a dice roll, the GM gives a number based on how hard the task is, and the player uses one card. Any modifiers are added and if the resulting number meets or exceeds the difficulty the player succeeds. If not, the test is failed. In both cases the card is discarded. Only after all cards in the hand are used the player gets a full hand again. Hands can also be reset if the GM thinks the characters have rested enough or at the start of a new session.

You see, in this system the players have to tactically think about if it's worth using the good cards early on, and which tasks they can afford to fail to save up the better cards for later on. Relevantly to a forum game, you wouldn't need dice bots or honour systems.

Basically it's not any different than throwing dice, instead you just get to choose which results you get and when, and the system just makes sure the distribution of the results is statistically similar to dice throws.

Of course, this results in the characters performing a bit better than they would in a random system, but I think that's fine for the cartoony setting of AW

The 10 cards was to supplant d10 in a system that uses d10 (we used it in Cyberpunk which I think is d10-based)

I prefer the discrete nature of being able to pick effectiveness over dice rolls. I feel like swapping out a Stunt if the c10 system, as it were, is used. Something like "a successful repair restocks the lowest used card, up to 5" although this may or may not be overpowered.

Speaking of which, Spotter should probably cost a point to use as the penalties are hardly detrimental.

On that note, where do FATE points factor in? From what I have read, you can use them for a small boost in general checks even after the roll or to activate stronger Stunts.

Yeah, Card Draw systems can work pretty well. They're used in places a lot where it's difficult to carry dice around and roll them (Like LARPs). The deck-deal thing is something I haven't seen before though! (I like it.)

IST wrote:Even the worst individual needs to discover the joys of a chicken statue that is also a pregnant blonde housewife.

BTW while we had each player holding an individual hand, one deck shared with the players would probably work just as well. Possibly even better!

There would be fewer things to track for one thing, which would make it much easier for forum play.

Each player having their individual hand, though, gives you this "battle fatigue" concept, which allows players to cover each other when they know someone has bad cards in their hand. "You look tired, let me handle this" This is something that doesn't really exist with dice rolling. I'm not sure which one I actually prefer.

I think I'm leaning towards shared deck, because it seems not only more convenient but also significantly less OP. FATE is a very forgiving system to begin with, especially compared to something like Cyberpunk which is notorious for being deadly.

You could have even the GM using the same pool for NPC throws, making it even harder to plan.

I've seen conversions where people have supplanted the FUDGE dice with a d100 or a d1000 by using a probability lookup table.

I'm not sure d10 has enough granularity, but...

How about:

10 cards

-2 x1
-1 x2
0 x3
+1 x2
+2 x1
+3 x1

1 = -2
2 = -1
3 = -1
4 = 0
5 = 0
6 = 0
7 = +1
8 = +1
9 = +2
10 = +3

edit: whoops fixed an error in the table

We might also swap the +3 for -3 since we can use FATE points to get those +3 and +4 results anyway. FATE points should probably add to the d10 roll rather than the final result. That would make a 6 stronger than a 4.

The reason I'm hell-bent on jamming this into d10 because I want to do this:

Last edited by Narts on Tue Jul 28, 2015 3:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

"everytime I try to draw xen I end up drawing a kangaroo smoking a cigar while chainsawing a tree" - Deoxy"I can't believe I'm the only person who voted Stallone. His appeal lies in watching is movies again and again just to hear what the hell he's talking about." - Kilteh

The more players there are, the more I prefer each one having an individual hand. For balancing purposes, perhaps no one starts with the highest numbers and instead gets them with rest or an adrenaline rush or resupply or something. This depends on how frequently checks are made since the rolls are then finite. As a silly example, we would need a lot more cards if there was a check every time we moved our limbs.

Definitely going to do the card thing now (because really, we like CHOICES more than leaving things up to Chance, right?), but I definitely need to think it out a bit more now. Especially because now I'll have two resources to hand out (cards and FATE points) and the cards really need to be balanced (in terms of how they're handed out).

But yeah, looking it over, I really do like the idea of cards. Should lead to much more smooth and fair gameplay.

HPD wrote:You know the only thing on the agenda of the Squirtle Squad is pure, unadulterated chaos.

I'm not sure it sounds like you completely understood the concept... you don't really "hand out" these cards so much that they just are there.

Each player (if we go with the individual decks) starts out with a full hand of 10 cards, numbered 1 through 10.

It gets replenished once all the cards are used up... but each card must be used before that. So you will make the same amount of bad rolls as you make good rolls.

You are right in that the ability to choose does somewhat serve a similar function to FATE points - making the game easier to survive for the players. So you do have to be careful about them becoming too powerful together.

There are ways to balance them though. One thing I suggested above was allowing FATE points only to modify the d10 roll itself, not the FUDGE result - this would mean it costs more to turn a 4 into a 7 (+1) than it costs to do the same to a 6. This would make FATE points a bit less powerful, while also making the middle cards different to each other instead of just zeroes with a different artwork.

We can also, well, fudge around the values of the cards (10 doesn't have to be +3 for example. We could make 1 a -3 instead), I just chose something that looked close enough to the statistical distribution of FUDGE rolls but it's not set in stone and nothing says it has to be that way if we think a tougher distribution will make the game more interesting.

edit: You can also occasionally create tests where the difficulty is hidden. And if you want to be evil, those tests can sometimes be impossible to beat, causing any cards and fate points used on it to be wasted...

BTW is it a good idea that there is a +3 in the deck but no -3? This will skew the statistical distribution towards the positive side.

It's this way because I could only be able to squeeze the FUDGE distribution somewhat neatly into 9 cards but I want 10, so there's this one that is bit of an odd one.

Another way to deal with it would be to make it another "0" card, so the amount of positive and negative results stays equal, there will just be a bigger proportion of neutral results than in real FUDGE. I'm currently leaning towards making this change... but then of course that means +3's will be only possible through FATE point use.

Or... I could make 1 a -3 and bump the other negative cards up so there's only 2 "zero" cards. Which might be less boring?

edit:
Yes, I think I'm going to make it:

-3, -2, -1, -1, 0, 0, +1, +1, +2, +3

10 sides is never going to be an accurate simulation of FUDGE anyway, but I think a balanced amount of positives and negatives is pretty important.

can we also have special effects cards for the other COs? i need to have a BURNING EARTH!!! card

"So when I say the fudge shaman flies he goddamn well flies and that's that." - Narts"My motto is that there are far too many women in the world to waste time with men." - thefalman"It's just that I'm not really aware of how a common conversation goes." - Imano Ob, talking on MSN about talking on MSN"As for FE8, that was IS' variant of Man Spam - Dudes with Swords edition." - Xenesis

yes in fact, it's really hard hosting a game when you don't have a head

(I honestly thought I had posted another reply to the card discussion. I didn't. sorry about that)

I do like that last ratio, and I think this is what we'll use:

-3, -2, -1, -1, 0, 0, +1, +1, +2, +3

It's simple, it's easy. People can use each number once, and once people are done using their cards, they'll simply refresh their hands. Should be fairly easy to keep track of. We'll see how the balance ends up being, but I think this is a good. With this system no dice will be rolled, you pick a card, add your skills, and if you can and wish to add a +2 for playing a FATE. Do I have the idea right?

I don't really like the idea of a shared hand, if only because I think it's going to be more work to keep the shared hand constantly up to date. I like the idea of everyone getting individual "cards". Yes, it means a little more to keep track of for each player, and yes it is a bit easy, but I think it's also more natural and I like the "battle fatigue" concept. This is definitely open to debate though.

Ok, so at some point tomorrow I will PM everyone the specific details of the few remaining stats I didn't have everyone calculate, and I will "start" the game... By which I mean I will write up an intro scenario and basically have people introduce themselves. I would like for anyone who still wants to work on their character some to have their characters finished (at least to a playable degree, you don't need all your stunts) by Monday (which is when I'm going to move past character introductions).

Everyone's character is fine, incidentally, but I know HPD was thinking about reworking his character, and Dragonite still hasn't posted his. The deadline isn't a hard deadline, but it's going to be awkward working a character into the game after it's started.

HPD wrote:You know the only thing on the agenda of the Squirtle Squad is pure, unadulterated chaos.

I'm gone for the weekend so don't expect any action from me until Monday at least

"So when I say the fudge shaman flies he goddamn well flies and that's that." - Narts"My motto is that there are far too many women in the world to waste time with men." - thefalman"It's just that I'm not really aware of how a common conversation goes." - Imano Ob, talking on MSN about talking on MSN"As for FE8, that was IS' variant of Man Spam - Dudes with Swords edition." - Xenesis

Most often our attempts at forum RP fail because people feel they are too much effort to keep up. Which is usually a result of us making them too much effort to keep up.

There's no need to try and write novels here. Concentrate on moving the story forward from your character's part. Not exploring their childhood traumas through elaborate flashbacks into how their mentor abused them during the MAN WARS.

One of the reasons I made the cards was for them to act as crisp reminders of the tone and quality of Advance Wars writing:

Thank you Narts. I actually was going to say the same thing, but held back because I was already saying more than enough as it was.

As the one guy here who actually has to read every single post, I would appreciate if you keep them to a sane length. I personally think 3 paragraphs is about the longest I would go, obviously the choice is yours, especially if you have important stuff going on in your post, but I like the 3 paragraph rule.

@HPD: I understand, thanks for telling me, I'll delay moving past character introductions until you're back and have posted. As far as ML goes, you can either post and then have something mysteriously happen to you that takes you out of action, or you can just wait until you come back to introduce yourself. Choice is yours.

HPD wrote:You know the only thing on the agenda of the Squirtle Squad is pure, unadulterated chaos.

as for your character, dragonite, don't let that bother you. If all else fails, start as a generic soldier and flesh your character out as you go. Pick a skill you like, +4 it, +3 Shoot and Atheletics, and boom you're good enough to survive.

So guys, I think I'm going to delay the game until Tuesday. We've got 2-3 people missing, would rather they miss as little as possible.

(delays due to people missing, it's like we're playing a real tabletop game )

HPD wrote:You know the only thing on the agenda of the Squirtle Squad is pure, unadulterated chaos.

as for your character, dragonite, don't let that bother you. If all else fails, start as a generic soldier and flesh your character out as you go. Pick a skill you like, +4 it, +3 Shoot and Atheletics, and boom you're good enough to survive.

or you could just steal a character from a war movie and change it a little bit

you could be kernel kurtz, the rogue co who likes nuts

p.s. I don't think it matters much when we start. This game will likely progress so slowly anyway they will miss absolutely nothing

no, I'm leaving next thursday(the 6th). So, eh, what Narts said? Let it just boil slowly for the messy august weeks so we can get the hang of it in the first place. I maaaay have wifi(you know most campings have them), but eh, not reliable. I''ll be in germany and it will still be a little while before Europe gets rid of increased roaming fees abroad.